Midway between (A) the tradition that Homer took so to heart his impotency to read—be it remembered he had been acclaimed “of mortals far the wisest”—the riddle of the fisher boys, that he took also to bed and shortly after died, and (B) the absolute assertion by Herodotus the Grammarian (Vita Homeri) that the poet “died at Ios of disease contracted on his arrival there, and not of grief at failing to understand the riddle of the fishers,” lies the account of the death given in the Ἀγὼν Ἡσιόδου καὶ Ὁμήρου, or The Contest between Hesiod and Homer.[183]
The Contest, despite the rather laboured thrusts of the antagonists full of curious if not connected touches, makes the funeral solemnities of King Amphidamas the occasion and Chalcis (not Aulis or Delos) the scene of the encounter.
Victory and prize were adjudged to Hesiod, because he “sang of Tilth and Peace, not of War and Gore.”[184]
If left to a jury composed of or even leavened by fishers instead of to the king, the verdict would surely have gone the other way, were it only on the ground that while Homer affords several spirited pictures of fishing, we search in vain all Hesiod’s genuine works for any mention, for even any allusion to fishing.
The word fish occurs only in Works and Days, line 277. Even if we allow The Shield of Heracles to be by Hesiod, we find but one passage (lines 214-5) relating to fishing, and this with a Net.[185] Hesiod’s silence on the subject surprises, for (a) he boasts himself the poet of country life, (b) states that as a youth he fed and led his flocks on the sides and amid the streams of Mount Helicon, and (c) passed the rest of his life on the banks of the river Cephissus.[186]
Homer had previously, on consulting the Pythian Priestess as to the country whence he sprang, received a response, which I render—
“Thy mother’s home is Ios, where in time Thou’lt lie; but ’ware the young lads’ riddling rhyme.”[187]
But now let the Ἀγὼν speak. “After the contest the poet sailed unto Ios, and there abode a long time, being already an old man. Sitting one day on the sea-shore, he asked some lads returning from fishing,
‘Fishermen from Arcadia, have we aught?’